Mistress of her own actions
Jul. 17th, 2020 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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vicomte_de_chagnyAnother thing Leroux-Raoul gets accused of is of trying to 'tie Christine down' and 'stifle her voice' by marrying her (whereas Erik's love is presumably setting her free from convention so that she can soar into song). A lot of this seems to be based on the scene where she tells him angrily that she is "mistress of her own actions" -- and in the context of Christine's supposed refusal to allow Raoul to "tie her down", it's interesting to read the deleted scene which immediately followed this in the original text, in which Christine's motives and attitude to Raoul are made quite explicit! (I can see why Leroux felt able to cut the scene in question, since it renders Raoul's subsequent fits of jealousy completely petulant and unfounded. But her refusal of marriage there is clearly not because she feels that he is stifling her or because she doesn't want to abandon the stage, but because she doesn't want to tie *him* down.)
In fact, the text runs "Je suis libre de mes actions, monsieur de Chagny": literally 'I am free to act [as I wish]'. There is a line that is closer to the translation "mistress of her own actions", and it is the one in Ch6 describing Christine's reaction to her stage triumph: "Elle agit comme si elle n'était plus la maîtresse de sa destinée" -- she behaved as if she were no longer the mistress of her own destiny' :-(
But here it is *Erik* who has deprived her of control over her own life...
In the context of Christine's statement, what Raoul is actually asking of her at this point is to consent to the promise that Madame Valerius has repeatedly begged of her during this scene, namely never to leave the old lady again (and go off to visit the Angel of Music). Christine has so far evaded this, not least presumably because she knows she is going to *have* to go back to Erik when he summons her. When Raoul chimes in, it is in a quasi-paternal tone ("we shall ask no questions if you will engage to put yourself under our protection") which understandably gets Christine's back right up: he literally has no right to associate himself with her mother like that as her protector. He is no relative of hers at all, and the law gives him no authority where she is concerned. Hence the outburst about husbands, since Christine has no surviving male relatives!
So it's not -- so far as it appears to me -- that Raoul is trying to make Christine into an obedient wife at that point; what he has done so far, rather ineptly, is to try to open the eyes of Madame Valerius to the fact that Christine is in the hands of an impostor and not some supernatural guardian, and attempt to get her to put her foot down instead of actively encouraging her daughter to believe such stories. All he has succeeded in achieving is puzzling and frightening the old lady, and now he is trying to put words into her mouth :-(
I don't think it has anything to do with wanting to 'stifle her voice'; what he is terrified of is that she is going to *disappear* again (he actually promises not to pry into anything she has been up to just so long as she can reassure him that she isn't going to repeat the vanishing act in the future -- of course she can't, poor Christine).
The rest of the scene -- in which he begs Christine's pardon, freely admits to her that he is prying into affairs that on the face of it have nothing to do with him, and tells her that she knows very well why he cares -- consists of Raoul attempting to persuade Madame Valerius (nominally) and via her Christine, whom he is effectively addressing via a third party here, that anyone who has acted as Erik has done cannot possibly have honourable motives.
Christine of course knows this already, and knows that she made a complete fool of herself by trusting the 'Voice' as a celestial messenger, which doesn't make her any more receptive to Raoul's earnest attempts to persuade her that Erik just possibly might not be what he seems. She knows perfectly well who Erik is, she knows that Raoul was in hideous danger when he was present in her dressing-room when Erik came for her through the mirror, and the last thing she needs is a Raoul convinced that he is the only one capable of hinting to these two defenceless feather-headed females that something might be a little fishy here -- no! you don't say ;-p
In fact, the text runs "Je suis libre de mes actions, monsieur de Chagny": literally 'I am free to act [as I wish]'. There is a line that is closer to the translation "mistress of her own actions", and it is the one in Ch6 describing Christine's reaction to her stage triumph: "Elle agit comme si elle n'était plus la maîtresse de sa destinée" -- she behaved as if she were no longer the mistress of her own destiny' :-(
But here it is *Erik* who has deprived her of control over her own life...
In the context of Christine's statement, what Raoul is actually asking of her at this point is to consent to the promise that Madame Valerius has repeatedly begged of her during this scene, namely never to leave the old lady again (and go off to visit the Angel of Music). Christine has so far evaded this, not least presumably because she knows she is going to *have* to go back to Erik when he summons her. When Raoul chimes in, it is in a quasi-paternal tone ("we shall ask no questions if you will engage to put yourself under our protection") which understandably gets Christine's back right up: he literally has no right to associate himself with her mother like that as her protector. He is no relative of hers at all, and the law gives him no authority where she is concerned. Hence the outburst about husbands, since Christine has no surviving male relatives!
So it's not -- so far as it appears to me -- that Raoul is trying to make Christine into an obedient wife at that point; what he has done so far, rather ineptly, is to try to open the eyes of Madame Valerius to the fact that Christine is in the hands of an impostor and not some supernatural guardian, and attempt to get her to put her foot down instead of actively encouraging her daughter to believe such stories. All he has succeeded in achieving is puzzling and frightening the old lady, and now he is trying to put words into her mouth :-(
I don't think it has anything to do with wanting to 'stifle her voice'; what he is terrified of is that she is going to *disappear* again (he actually promises not to pry into anything she has been up to just so long as she can reassure him that she isn't going to repeat the vanishing act in the future -- of course she can't, poor Christine).
The rest of the scene -- in which he begs Christine's pardon, freely admits to her that he is prying into affairs that on the face of it have nothing to do with him, and tells her that she knows very well why he cares -- consists of Raoul attempting to persuade Madame Valerius (nominally) and via her Christine, whom he is effectively addressing via a third party here, that anyone who has acted as Erik has done cannot possibly have honourable motives.
Christine of course knows this already, and knows that she made a complete fool of herself by trusting the 'Voice' as a celestial messenger, which doesn't make her any more receptive to Raoul's earnest attempts to persuade her that Erik just possibly might not be what he seems. She knows perfectly well who Erik is, she knows that Raoul was in hideous danger when he was present in her dressing-room when Erik came for her through the mirror, and the last thing she needs is a Raoul convinced that he is the only one capable of hinting to these two defenceless feather-headed females that something might be a little fishy here -- no! you don't say ;-p
